


with a skewered heart in the centre

by crookedspoon



Series: Red Dead Redemption [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Affection, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, POV Dick Grayson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 04:26:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17697620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: Following what should have been a nice, romantic Valentine's dinner, Dick ruminates on the public nature of his relationship with Bruce.





	with a skewered heart in the centre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FleetSparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/gifts).



> Many thanks to the Batfam discord server for the idea as well as [LightningHope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightningHope) and [LuthienLuinwe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe) for the beta!

Water rushes into the basin, cold enough to hurt Dick's teeth when he takes a sip. He gargles, spits, then gives his choppers another furious scrub as if they had personally offended him.

"Was the food that terrible?" Bruce asks. He's undoing his cufflinks – the monogrammed ones Dick gave him on their last anniversary – and Dick's eyes soften, his brushing growing less severe. Bruce is never more attractive than when he's in a state of undress, his bowtie hanging loose around his neck, the top half of his shirt unbuttoned, his expression unguarded.

"Wasn't the food," Dick says through a mouthful of froth. He rinses his mouth to continue. "It was us."

"Us?" Bruce stores the cufflinks in the jewelry box on the commode.

Dick has considered wearing them to social events himself, mind reeling with the implication of ownership this gesture evokes, but he'd really rather not give the gossip rags more to tear into and over-examine. He goes for the less obvious route by wearing Bruce's boxer briefs, aware of the monogram stitched into the waistband like a brand on his lower back.

Bruce, ever the detective, always notices, always figures out the reason, gaze burning hotter, and really, that's all Dick is ever going for.

Still, if he'd had a reason to wear cufflinks in the manor where everyone knew him and Bruce and he can drop the rich pretty boy act, he'd probably do it, no matter how many eye-rolls that would garner him. 

Dick drops his toothbrush into its glass and dries off his mouth.

"Don't you think we're disgustingly sweet?"

Bruce pauses, his entire chest falling with a heavy exhale. "I admit, we're rather... affectionate in public."

Affectionate is putting it mildly. Dick's cheeks are hurting from smiling so damn much and his eyes are developing a tic from crinkling all the time. He’d barely tasted the food because he was simpering like a fool. It's not like looking at Bruce _doesn't_ make him want to smile, but his feelings begin to sour when he has to crank them up to eleven.

It's no one's fault but his own and that's really what seals it. He'd been the one who'd insisted they take this step, come out to the public as a couple. In a way, it had been an underhanded tactic to force commitment out of Bruce and Dick is still vaguely embarrassed by that.

Until then, they'd been hiding in plain sight, never so much as a stray word or gesture where anyone could see and spread a dirty rumor. Bad publicity was certainly something they'd been meaning to avoid. After all, it would raise questions if a man of means were seen dating his former ward. 

Dick had proposed they play their public personas as besotted with each other – which wasn't far from the truth – partly to shield Bruce from the negative backlash of their going public, partly to be able to express his feelings openly and without filter. The first time he allowed himself to hold Bruce's hand where cameras could go off, he'd been too giddy to breathe and nearly fainted from his love-drunkenness. He hadn't taken Bruce's hand in public since he'd been waist-high and seeking reassurance rather than expressing his affection. (Or maybe he'd been staking a claim, because that bachelor right here was officially off the market, ladies. Sorry, not sorry.)

"Do you regret it?" Dick murmurs, letting the soothing scent of sandalwood and sage wafting from Bruce's collar calm his frayed nerves. 

It's a scent he associates with Bruce and falling asleep in his arms at three in the morning, when he may have been too young to understand the implications of Bruce loving him, but wanting that love all the same.

Bruce winds his arms around Dick's back, drawing him closer, melting him with his body heat. 

"No. Whatever 'it' is." He presses a kiss to the side of Dick's head and buries his nose in his hair. A spark of electricity runs from Dick's crown to the soles of his feet and he shivers. "Do you?"

Dick shakes his head, although it doesn't feel truthful at all. He wants to say that the performance of their relationship is beginning to wear him down, because it's disingenuous, it's a farce, and it's not who they really are. 

At the same time, being able to kiss Bruce whenever he feels like it instead of waiting until they're out of view, which by their standards means back at the manor, is the most honest he can be. It's not something he'd want to trade for anything in the world.

With a quirk of his lips, he says, "I guess I just miss the days when I was able flirt with anyone at a party and you couldn't do anything about it."

Bruce draws in a big, dangerous inhale; his hand travels down the small of Dick's back and over the swell of his ass. Dick's grin grows wider when Bruce _squeezes._

"Kate said it was embarrassing to watch," Dick continues, "but I loved how _mad_ it made you."

In fact, sex was never more spectacular than when Bruce was jealous. He'd hold Dick down for hours until he was barely coherent anymore, unable to babble anything but "yours, yours, _yours._ "

It still makes Dick's knees weak to remember.

"You've always been a bad tease," Bruce growls and runs his teeth over Dick's neck.

Dick is all but ready to sink to his knees in front of Bruce, but he stands his ground. "Feel free to put me over your knee, _daddy._ "

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Bruce's nostrils flare. He's not fond of the pet name, but doesn't mention it. One hand is hard around Dick's bicep, the other on his ass, and Dick can almost feel Bruce's restrained intention to smack it. "It's not punishment if you want it."

"That hasn't stopped you before."

"I've been spoiling you too much, haven't I?" Bruce asks with a rasp in his voice that tickles Dick in all the right ways.

Before he can think to come up with a cheeky answer, Bruce claims his mouth in a bruising kiss and Dick yields. There's nothing else he could have done. Bruce's desire is a force of nature, and Dick is swept up helplessly in its path. 

Bruce picks him up like he barely weighs anything and his strength never fails to make Dick's head spin. Not to mention that he really enjoys being thrown over Bruce's shoulder, like he's worth being carried off, worth being kept, worth being _wanted._

By the time his back hits the mattress of the king-size bed, Dick is more than ready for whatever Bruce has in store for him. He blankets Dick's body with his own, hot chest searing against Dick's skin even through the layers of clothing, and kisses him deeply. 

Dick moans as Bruce's tongue delves into his mouth and liquefies every last one of Dick's muscles that had still been tensing up. Bruce cock is lying thick and heavy against Dick's thigh and Dick would grind against it if he had the structural integrity to. He's a pile of goo in Bruce's arms, no longer able to move by himself.

Bruce could have done anything to him then. He could have folded Dick in half and had his merry way with him and all Dick would have done is cried a litany of thank yous for his trouble.

He's so besotted with Bruce it's ridiculous.

The reverse is also true, and that's what makes their relationship so delicious. Dick could wrap Bruce around his pinkie just as easily as Bruce could do the same to him. It all depends on who wants to lead and who wants to follow. They butt heads occasionally when they both want to lead, but they've mostly worked it out by now.

In the end, they both want the same thing: each other.

Bruce's hot length is grinding against Dick's and the fly of his trousers is chafing a little, but not enough to take his mind of all-consuming sensation that is Bruce.

Somehow, with a lot of wrestling and rolling on the bed they manage to rid themselves of their clothes, and Dick is free to do as he likes, which just happens to be rubbing his length against Bruce's until they're both gasping, until there's no separating their breaths or the curses spilling from their lips – curses that double as prayers infused with the love they have for each other.

It may not be a healthy love – there are many detractors who think it's gross and unnatural, and not in the comedic way Jason might think it's gross and unnatural simply because he grew up with them and doesn't _want_ to see them together, but rather in a hateful way that disregards the genuine feelings they have for each other and view Bruce as nothing more than filthy pedophile. It may not be, but it's open and honest and everything Dick could ever have wished for, despite what anyone says.

They don't know what Bruce is like behind closed doors. They don't know how much he cares. Dick is not a child who can't make his own decisions. He chose this. He chose his happiness with Bruce, and he hasn't regretted it a day since.

It makes him so irrationally angry sometimes that people would stick their noses where they don't belong and cast judgment over others' lives instead of examining their own. If they did, perhaps they'd realize why it is that _they_ don't have a relationship as loving as the one Dick has with Bruce.

Case in point: Bruce is perfectly willing to obliterate the mood with his concern for Dick.

"I'm sorry you didn't enjoy yourself," Bruce says, lips hovering above Dick's own, earnestness etched in every line of his face. It can be off-putting at times.

"I was enjoying myself mighty fine until just now," Dick says with a bout of startled laughter. One moment they're clutching at each other and riding the wave to a crest, the next they're having a heart-to-heart without ever reaching that point they'd been striving towards.

"I meant at the restaurant."

"I know, and I enjoyed myself there, too." Dick lets his head thud back into the pillow, already moving on to other topics although his body is still strung tight and quivering with the need to come. "I just... I wish we could spend Valentine's Day as ourselves for once, away from all the hubbub, and without having to put the barrier of an overblown romantic charade between us." Dick silences Bruce with a finger to his lips. "And before you mention it, bleeding out in the Batcave or lying in bed with the flu being tended to doesn't count. It's not really romantic by any definition of the word."

"But you still look very delectable doing it." Bruce's smile is on the side of hungry right now and his fingers stroking Dick's hips are still fanning his desire to be touched, to be held down, to be _possessed._

"I know." Dick grins and lays himself out like a centerfold model as much as he can. "But I'm surprised you'd say that when you have me pinned naked and willing beneath you. I can't imagine being any more delectable than that when I'm sick and/or dying."

"Perhaps it's truly as you say. I must be getting senile."

"Sustained too many blows to the head, old man. Quick, get the doctor."

"I'd prefer to keep this between the two of us for now, don't you?"

Bruce rocks his hips against Dick's again and Dick gasps, but not because of the tingling sensation that shoots up his spine.

Rather, because he remembered something related and similar but also alien and strange. Something that may have been bothering him all night even though he didn't know it yet.

He curls his fingers into Bruce's hair, and asks, somewhat bravely, bizarrely, stupidly, "Did you know that people are writing this about us?"

"This?" Bruce asks with a kiss to Dick's temple, twisting the firm grip he has on both their lengths. "They're always writing about us. About our sex life. You never mentioned that it bothered you."

Dick whines, because he never really wanted to tell Bruce about it and now here he is, ready to blab everything he knows when Bruce is trying to take him out of his mind and into heaven.

Damn Roy for bringing it to Dick's attention and damn Dick for bringing it up now. What kind of pillow talk is that? 

"There are people who write our public personas engaging in... very intimate acts that are described in very graphic detail and publish it on the internet."

Bruce is silent for a few moments and sometimes Dick forgets how unnerving that can be.

"Some of it is really good," Dick says, faintly. Absurdly.

"And you know this how?"

Dick's cheeks are blazing and he's ready to throw Roy under the bus, because while Bruce prizes his ability to keep a secret, he doesn't prize secrets being kept from him. Roy might deserve being thrown under the bus for sharing his findings, yet Dick's sense of loyalty forbids sharing his source. Even though part of him wants to. The part that would rather have remained oblivious.

" _That's_ all you care about?" Dick asks instead. "How I know? I may have read some of it. Call it morbid curiosity if you like."

"Dick," Bruce says softly and kisses Dick's pouting lips. "It's not important what other people say about us."

"But this is not like another opinion piece on us," Dick protests, pushing at Bruce's shoulders. "They're imagining us like we are right now, in each other's arms and—"

Dick stops himself, realizing he's using the exact same language he's read in these works of erotic fiction. Except it's not fiction to him, it hits somewhere closer to home. 

Bruce doesn't seem to share Dick's concerns.

"That is what it's like to live in the public eye," Bruce says and brushes Dick's bangs out of his eyes. "Our private life is no longer private. You knew that when we came out."

Dick is not so sure anymore that he did. He couldn't have considered every aspect of what their coming out would entail, especially not if it was outside the realm of his imagination.

What he _is_ sure about is that the only way Bruce can remain this nonchalant is because he hasn't read any of these works. If he knew how _detailed_ they are, maybe he'd reconsider his position. But maybe not. Bruce's priorities are clear-cut and silly distractions like the written content Dick has found don't even register on his radar.

It embarrasses Dick all over again to get this riled up about something that basically amounts to nothing. He may have been guiltily consuming them, weirded out and fascinated at the same time, flushing all over as he couldn't help but imagine Bruce doing all of these wild things to him.

Dick swallows as Bruce lies down beside him and gathers him into an embrace. Was that why he broached the subject? Because he wanted Bruce to develop an interest in trying out what these stories had them do?

Bruce tilts Dick's face toward his with a thumb on his chin, and the gesture is so commanding, so demanding of respect and focus that Dick's mouth runs dry.

Dick is two seconds away from rolling over when Bruce suggests, almost out of the blue, "Do you perhaps want to watch a movie together?"

"A movie? Now?" Dick is thrown by this non-sequitur.

"I can see this topic upsets you, so I thought a movie and perhaps Alfred's chocolate fudge cake might help take your mind off of it. It's still Valentine's Day after all and you wanted us to spend time as a couple." He pauses for a quick smile. "I presume that means outside of bed."

Dick doesn't need time to consider. "How can I say no to Alfred's baked goods?" With a grin and a dash of sarcasm, he adds, "Though I suppose spending some time with you is good, too."

Bruce just shakes his head.

Mentally, Dick is already going through the assortment of available romantic comedies to find the right one for the occasion. Although in the end it won't matter what they watch. All that matters is that they'll be doing it together, as themselves, away from any prying eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "February" by Margaret Atwood.
> 
> I'm taking suggestions for the kind of RPF that's written about Dick and Bruce's public personas xD


End file.
